PREreview of Cognition and Intelligence

This review is the result of a virtual, collaborative Live Review discussion organized by one of PREreview's 2025 Champions on September 20, 2025. The discussion was joined by 5 people: 2 facilitators and 3 live review participants. The authors of this review have dedicated additional asynchronous time over the course of 10 days to help compose this final report using the notes from the Live Review. Special thanks to all participants who contributed to the discussion and made it possible to provide feedback on this preprint.

Summary:

This study focuses on the meaning of cognition and intelligence, with greater emphasis placed on the life-centered perspective, which the author considers broader and more encompassing. The main goal is to help humans better understand the nature of mind, life, and intelligent technologies.

The author approaches the study by evaluating and comparing ideas from existing literature in philosophy, psychology, biology, and artificial intelligence across different periods. The analysis establishes that cognition and intelligence can be viewed from two perspectives—human-centered and life-centered—and shows that these concepts, despite their centrality and ubiquity, are still poorly understood due to narrow definitional frameworks that fail to capture the full scope of current scientific understanding.

A total of 15 published works were analyzed comparatively and summarized in a table. From this, the ratio of human-centered to life-centered perspectives was 3:4, with only one author bridging the two. The most recent works emphasized the life-centered perspective (21st century), whereas all the human-centered references were from the 20th century. An interesting aspect of the study is that the true definition of intelligence and cognition remains unresolved, which may explain why AI systems, although surpassing humans in some intellectual tasks, still do not behave like humans.

 Despite the fact that the study suggests future upgrades to the definitions of cognition and intelligence and provides value across multiple fields, its main weakness lies in being entirely theoretical, with no empirical data to support its claims.

List of major concerns and feedback:

Concerns with techniques and analyses

• The study is majorly conceptual and theoretical. There were no empirical techniques, analyses, or controls being adopted to get to a conclusion. The problem is that without empirical testing, the claim remains at a theory level and future studies will be needed to validate them with real-life case studies or empirical data. The author could explicitly acknowledge this limitation in the discussion and suggest potential empirical directions (e.g., case studies in biology, cognitive science experiments, or AI simulations) that could help validate or refine the theoretical claims.

• The manuscript would benefit from the addition of conceptual diagrams or flowcharts which would help visualise the relationship between the frameworks discussed. Adding conceptual diagrams or flowcharts to map how mentalist vs. embodied and human-centered vs. life-centered perspectives intersect would make the arguments more accessible, especially to interdisciplinary readers.

• There is a risk of overgeneralization when discussing cognition about all forms of life. The author should refine their claims by clarifying that life-centered cognition is still a developing framework and may not apply uniformly across all organisms. Including counterarguments or alternative viewpoints would strengthen the credibility of the study.

List of minor concerns and feedback:

•  Sufficient details were provided, but they cannot be replicated and validated empirically. The author could make this clear in the discussion and emphasize that the study is conceptual or theoretical in scope.

• The author could consider adding short summary paragraphs at the end of each major section to emphasize key points.

• Headings should be revised for consistency. For example, since sections 2 and 3 compare two traditions, they should follow a similar heading structure to improve clarity.

Figures and Tables 

• Figure 1 is vague. It is not well labeled, and there is no key to show what the different color codes mean.The figure should be revised to include a detailed legend or key for all symbols and colors, and axis labels should be added. A short descriptive caption clarifying the figure’s purpose would go a long way in helping readers understand the diagram better.

• The work in the table has to be arranged based on the progression of years or any other pattern that the author might choose to use. It should not be scattered. The table should be arranged either chronologically (by year of publication) or thematically (e.g., grouping human-centered vs. life-centered perspectives). This would improve readability and highlight the historical or conceptual progression.

• In table 2, the year of reference should be included in the authors’ column and not under the title of the work. They could use the APA style of referencing that includes the year of publication. For example, Jean Piaget, 1970.

• The titles of works are included in Tables 2. Since these will already appear in the reference list, they could be removed to streamline the table. Only the author and year would be sufficient.

Limitation discussed

• No limitations of the research were discussed in the manuscript. The author should add a short section to point out the limitations of the study, such as not having real data, depending on selected literature, and the challenge of clearly defining life-centered cognition. This would make the paper more balanced and clear.

• A potential limitation of the study is that the data depends on selective representation of the literature which may not cover the full range of perspectives. The author only chose some works from the literature, not all possible ones. They should either justify why those works were chosen or admit the study doesn’t cover everything.

Ethics

Since this study is purely theoretical, no ethical guidelines are required.

Additional comments 

• The manuscript does not include new data. It is a theoretical or conceptual study supported entirely by previous literature. No source code or supplementary material is associated with the work. Claims about cognition and intelligence sometimes appear overly generalized without empirical support.

• The main strength of this study is in its broad and integrative approach, drawing from philosophy, psychology, biology, and artificial intelligence. It challenges the human-centered bias that dominates traditional definitions of cognition and intelligence, and emphasizes cognition as a fundamental property of all living systems. By highlighting gaps in existing definitions, the study encourages future research on adaptive processes in plants, microorganisms, and other simple life forms.

• The study builds on existing literature across disciplines but shows that most sources are anchored in human-centered or mentalist perspectives. It points out that current definitions of cognition and intelligence are not broad enough, suggesting the need for conceptual updates.

• The lack of a universally accepted definition of intelligence and cognition is an important insight from the study, helping explain why AI systems can excel at specific tasks yet still fail to behave like humans.

Concluding remarks

We thank the authors of the preprint for posting their work openly for feedback. Many thanks also to all participants of the Live Review call for their time and for engaging in the lively discussion that generated this review.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The authors declare that they did not use generative AI to come up with new ideas for their review.